Business owners say something has to be done about the rising number of break-ins that have been plaguing downtown.

"It's got to the point that it's crazy, and you know they're gonna try again," said Carol Welch, a hairdresser who has worked for 40 years at Roma's Hair Fashion at 63 Main St.

On Wednesday morning, Roma's became the latest victim of what shop owners along Main Street describe as an epidemic of after-hours larceny.

Some of the late-night and early morning burglaries qualify as classic smash-and-grab, with perpetrators breaking out a window and running off with whatever was within reach.

Others, like Roma's, involve an element of malicious destruction, with drawers being pulled out, contents emptied on the floor and displays and other items being broken.

The businesses that have been broken into include Eastern Music at 45 Main St., Tux Towne at 40 Main St., The Perfect Nail at 54 Main St. and 1000 Degrees clothing store at 56 Main St.

A thrift store called Kyleigh's Closet at 4 Cedar St. was broken into either Monday night or Tuesday morning.

Owner Janine Raymond of Wareham, who opened the business in October with her boyfriend, said it was the second time in the past two weeks someone had broken in the front door and ransacked her office looking for valuables.

Raymond, 25, said she got a call from her landlord, Tux Towne owner Jose Bejarano, that the glass in one of her double doors had been smashed again.

She said the thief or thieves got away with about $25 in change. But Raymond was more unsettled by the damage done to her back office, which had been completely ransacked.

"I'm not comfortable at all, especially with my daughter here," Raymond said, as 8-month-old Kyleigh slept while her mother swept up broken glass and finished picking up clothing and other merchandise.

"I don't know what they were looking for, silly things I guess. They even left the refrigerator open," said Raymond, who was unable to conduct business Tuesday because of the damage.

She said the second incident has convinced her to invest activating an alarm system left by the previous tenant.

Diane Roma, 67, said it was just the second time in more than 40 years downtown that she'd been broken into.

Roma said whoever smashed the window near her front door stepped on and crushed consignment ear rings and sunglasses. They also stole petty cash put aside by Roma and her friends for their St. Pierre's Shoes shoe club, as well as jewelry that once belonged to Roma's mother.

She said the thief also went into her refrigerator and left the door open.

Roma says she'd made a habit of leaving her cash register open when she goes home, on the advice of a Taunton cop some 15 years ago who told her it would serve as a sign that there's no money in the store.

Page 2 of 3 - She said, this time she had $800 stashed underneath the drawer because she didn't have time to make a deposit at the bank. She also said her rent check was missing.

Welch, 69, said she found out the shop had been burglarized when she came to work at 5:30 a.m. and saw a police car parked out front.

Beatrice Silvia, who sometimes works alone at Roma's on Monday nights, said despite the efforts of the mayor's office and Business Improvement District to improve and promote downtown, the area is becoming more dangerous.

"There's a lot of riffraff," Silvia said. "I work behind locked doors, and my customers lock the door behind them when they come in, because they know."

Roma said she's now finally going to invest in an alarm system.

Taunton Police Chief Edward Walsh said that's what every downtown merchant should have done by now.

He said even though the latest flurry of break-ins "sounds like a lot, I don't see a spike (in crime downtown) compared to the past."

Walsh said he's met with merchants at recent crime watch meetings, including one held at the office of the Taunton Business Improvement District, to get his message across that it's up to them to help themselves.

"They need to harden and toughen their business so it's harder to break into," which he said involves investing in alarms and camera surveillance systems.

The Bejarano and Dorsey buildings have private surveillance systems. But Welch and Roma think the city should also invest in a camera system for the Main Street block.

Walsh said the BID is looking into a grant program that would help defray the cost of a surveillance system for businesses.

The chief said he understands the concerns of merchants, but said he lacks the money to assign extra patrols on continual basis.

Patia Campbell said she attended the meeting held a month ago at the BID office on Trescott Street. She says her Eastern Music store has been broken into twice over the past two months.

One time she lost $2,000 worth of instruments; another time she lost what she said was a sizeable amount of cash.

"I've been in business here for 25 years, and I never felt that element before. I never knew there was such a drug problem in Taunton," Campbell said.

Yanni Smiliotopoulos, owner of Rainforest Gardens Floral Shop at 65 Main St., said he was asleep in his shop at 2 a.m. when he heard a noise coming from Roma's next door. But he said he didn't suspect it was anything suspicious and went back to sleep.

Smiliotopoulos and his friend Bejarano were the subject of a story in 2007, when they conspired to trap two men who had been stealing copper pipes from downtown buildings.

Page 3 of 3 - They hid out on top a roof at night and alerted police who made the arrests.

Smiliotopoulos said he chased away a 20-year-old intruder last summer who tried stealing chairs from a small patio behind his business.

"I told him I'd come down and kill him, and he took off," he said.

Mary Annunziato of Taunton said she was disgusted after learning that the used clothing store on Cedar Street had been broken into again.

"If that keeps happening then the businesses are going to move out of here, and in the end it will look like that broken-down place," she said, motioning to the empty Star Theater building.